The real stories from inside the F1 paddock

Jacques Swaters

Jacques Swaters has died at the age of 84. Swaters may not be a well known name in the modern era but in his day he was a big player: a Grand Prix driver in his own right; a team owner and the Ferrari concessionaire for Belgium.

The son of a Dutch father and a Belgian mother, Swaters grew up with his grandparents following the death of his mother when he was only two months old. He was fortunate in that his father has made a fortune with a pharmaceutical company called Raadkamp, which produced quinine in Sumatra. His father died when he was 12, just before the start of World War II. Jacques became involved in the resistance in his early teens as his sister Jacqueline was an active participant in a sabotage network called Group G, which was headed by his brother-in-law Georges Marcq, who was later arrested and died in the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp.

In May 1944 Jacques and Jacqueline were arrested by the Germans. She was released but he remained a prisoner for two months, being subjected to regular violent interrogations. He was being transported to Germany when the Belgian resistance attacked the train and he was able to escape and was reunited with his family when the Allied Forces liberated Brussels. He began training with a regiment of paratroopers in Belgium and later joined the 2nd Special Air Service Regiment where he completed his training before going to war in Holland. After the war ended Swaters won a place at the Université Catholique de Louvain, where he studied Philology, Literature and Pre-Law but he found life very dull and turned to racing for excitement. When he inherited his fortune he began racing, although he continued his studies until 1952. His first race was in 1948 when he made his debut in the Spa 24 Hours in a pre-war MG which he shared with Paul Frere. They finished fourth in class. He established a team called Ecurie Belgique and ran assorted pre-war machinery for an ever-widening group of friends, including Roger Laurent and Andre Pilette. In 1950 the team had enough cash to buy a Talbot-Lago Grand Prix car which they planned to enter in international events. At that point the Royal Automobile Club de Belgique decided that the name of the team was not acceptable and so it was forced to become Ecurie Francorchamps.

While this was happening Swaters was also in the process of setting up a garage in Brussels which took on the name Garage Francorchamps. Pilette crashed the Talbot at the Dutch Grand Prix in 1951 and so Swaters took over the repaired car. They needed a new car and so Swaters purchased a Formula 2 Ferrari 500 from Gianni Agnelli, thus beginning a relationship with Ferrari which would continue for more than 50 years. In the years that followed the team ran the Ferrari and Swaters won the Formula 2 race at AVUS. That year Ferrari asked Swaters to be their representative at the Brussels Salon and then he became the first Ferrari distributor in Europe. The team also enjoyed success with a Jaguar C-Type in sports car events and finished fourth at Le Mans and third in the Reims 12 Hours with Laurent. Swaters then concentrated on sports cars, taking the team’s D-Type to third place at Le Mans with Johnny Claes in 1955. That same year he and Claes set up Ecurie Nationale Belge at the behest of Shell Belgium. To begin with ENB ran the old Ferrari but then moved on to Cooper-Climax F2 cars and in 1961 a pair of Emeryson-Maseratis. These were not much use and the team switched to Lotus 18s but later reworked the Emerysons and named them ENBs. The team disappeared when these failed to be competitive.

Ecurie Francorchamps continued, however, entering cars in races all over the world right through until the end of the 1970s and became one of the most respected Ferrari privateer organizations alongside Luigi Chinetti’s North American Racing Team (NART). Swaters himself retired as a driver in 1957 to concentrate on his business which he would eventually sell to the Inchcape Group.

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If I’m not mistaken,he and Chinetti were the only two dealers to have their own official Ferrari paint codes. Ran into him at a Cavallino Classic here years ago. Quite the mess with the Ohio court case.

I had the great pleasure of meeting Mr. Swaters at his garage years ago when Andre Pilette took me there. What a place that was Ferraris in various states of repair from floor to ceiling it seemed like.

Both Swaters and Pilette were great gentlemen that went out of the way to encourage a young racing novice and I appreciated it at the time and its a very fond memory now. May he rest in peace after a life well lived. And Joe, thanks for the nice write up on him

Joe, it’s difficult to explain but Jacques Swaters was involved recently in a legal battle about an old Ferrari which crashed and the wreckage is worth fortunes, but a wealthy American family says they own the car.

And when you see the picture of the car, your first impression will be, are they battling for this.

I learned to know Jacques Swaters on TV. RTBF showed his Ferrari collection and Ferrari liked him so much that they launched the Ferrari 456GT in Brussels and not in Italy. Swaters has/had a very big Ferrari collection, not cars but collector’s item, personal stuff from Enzo Ferrari, Gilles Villeneuve, etc.. at least that’s what I remember from the portrait. Everything was under the Ferrari garage. “Une caverne de Ali Baba.”

Having worked for several years at Garage Francorchamps, I remember the “cave” in which the entire Swaters collection of documents, photos, cars etc was stored. Mr. Swaters was a real old school character who loved to drink, smoke, dine at restaurants every night, yet never seemed to run out of steam.
I particularly remember him telling me a story about a Ferrari 330 P4 he sold to Dean Martin in the sixties, only for Martin to have the engine replaced by a Ford V8…!

There was only one Saward in the war. My grandfather Donald. He was already quite old by then (in his 40s) so he did not get called up for a while. He worked in the City and – by accident – found himself working a fireman in the Blitz, When he did get called up he was sent off to Africa with the Eighth Army to do something menial and ended up with heat exhaustion and was sent and assigned to an outfit called the Parachute Regiment, where he again did menial things. He was supposed to go to Arnhem in 1944, but the mess that developed meant that the support crews did not get flown over and had to wait at home while the rest of the unit got well-mauled. Not a very heroic story really… but I was very pleased as he was a lovely old boy and I enjoyed many great times with him in my childhood.

I’m not being funny Joe, but have you considered doing a self – publish book compendium of all your bios from this blog?

Steve Blank proved the model. He’s an unrelated field, but you might appreciate him. “Secret History of Silicon Valley” is a classic lecture up on video.

I’d go for a few copies. Save me reading out your writing to family, friends and a whole lot of phone calls.

Nice, clear print please. Find someone who understands what Knuth did with TeX (“Tee Eee Chi”, “Tech”) . You can find grad students who’d do your typeset for love, just find a sciences man, not an arts type.

We fifties kids have a somewhat romanticized image of the Blitz; nookie in air-raid shelters, officious Wardens, and lashings of stiff-lips, and Churchilian resolve. But of course it must have been very different.

Winston forbade the reporting of one of the worst tragedies, when, through blind panic, more than a hundred civilians were trampled to death in their rush into a tube station after an air raid warning.

It’s out of my window. I get the jeebies every time i go there, i try to avoid it. There’s some plan, at vast expense, to make a silly memorial. Don’t need no memorial, it’s still in the air. Bloody skivs, that idea, lining their own pockets.

I am younger than you, I think, but my immediate family were born when the last century was born. It took a while for them to become human again, and have me.

We screwed up so much.

But, if you’ve never looked into this, find out where both we, and the Russians put our injured. Them, an island off Petersburg, us hostpitals in the home counties. There’s such good positive stories everywhere.

I don’t know that that decision, went so high. It’s one of the origins of the d – note.

I grew up not with nostalgia, but with the searing, almost inhuman, insight, of my Uncle, who was a War Office Director.

[…] Jacques SwatersTom Wheatcroft: 1922-2009Otay, for reasons unknown ? I totally missed out upon commenting upon Mr. Wheatcroft?s passing away just over one year ago… As my memories are pretty hazy towards my Solitary ?connection? involving Messer Wheatcroft; being that rain soaked 1993 European GP, which I vaguely recall watchin? on ze Telescreen way back when… With the conditions being quite horrible ? whilst the late Ayrton Senna put on another wet weather driving Clinique. Apparently having won the race by a country mile! […]

I meet Mr Swaters in 1965. I bought pieces for my Lusso at the dealership He was very nice to a youngster like me.
The next year he ran at Daytona 24 and I was the food an spirits guy for the crew. Remember it’s a long race and that year very cold.
Pre race the P4 ( I think) needed a taillight. They didn’t have one but I did, it was on my Lusso. They promised it would be replace if it was damaged. My reward, I was the “driver” when the car was pushed to the grid.
That was a big moment for a 20 yrs old.
They ran as high as 4 th and the car broke as the sun came up.
Oh, I got the light back.
Swater was a good judge of talent. That year one of his drivers was another kid “Jackie Ickx”. I think it was his first race in the U.S.
Over the years many fellows got their start with Jacques.
As we were now friends, I was able to keep my job at 1967 Le Mans 24, I think we fell out early.
Those were some of my finest memories.